“Critique days” were met with both anxiety and excitement in my undergraduate creative writing courses. The whole class would sit in a circle and, one-by-one, we would each have our writing critiqued by both our peers and our instructors. Talk about nerve wracking. Sometimes the feedback would be helpful and encouraging. Other times, I would… Read more »
Last summer, Alison Walsh from the literary food blog Alison’s Wonderland Recipes sent me a surprising invitation: To write the introduction for her then-upcoming cookbook, A Literary Tea Party. It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. First, it meant having a byline in a published book—and what writer wouldn’t be excited about that? Second, it… Read more »
What’s the difference between writing for kids and writing for adults? You may assume it’s something like using simpler words for kids, or ‘dumbing down’ the story, but that’s not the case. Kids can handle challenging words and concepts. Kids do have different needs and expectations, though. There’s a great DIY MFA post here with… Read more »
The first time I heard, “there’s nothing about the main character that makes me care about her,” it felt like someone punched me in the throat. Yes, a bit of a dramatic response, but right then and there that’s how I felt. I sat for days afterward wondering what was wrong with me. Had four… Read more »
Some may argue that fantasy offers the most wide-open landscape for storytelling. But with 5,000 years of recorded human history spanning many civilizations both extant and extinct, empires that have come and gone, innumerable people both famous and infamous, and seven continents (well, maybe Antarctica isn’t quite so rich a source), the worlds and characters… Read more »
I came late to The Fart Party, only discovering the wonderfully funny work of Julia Wertz long after her diary comics zines [RE1] of that title had been published as a collection in The Museum of Mistakes. I found this hilarious book in a comics store in Ashland, Oregon, and bartered for it with my… Read more »
Dear Editor, I’ve been working on my current manuscript for a while now. It’s special to me, and I want it to be the best it can, so I’ve had it read by an editor and gotten feedback from other writers and even an agent. I’ve murdered it so much at this point. Like I… Read more »
A few years ago, in the middle of a fierce winter and an even fiercer case of writer’s block, my mom gave me an incredible suggestion to help me past what had been stoppering my writing for several months. “What does your character think?” she said. It never occurred to me to ask, but once… Read more »
You’ve done it. Developed a writing voice distinctly your own. Readers can clearly hear YOU in your articles, essays, and poems. Congrats! But what about your fiction? If you’re like me, the trick of bringing that voice to fiction, and writing believable characters—with their own voices—is not so clear. In my first article on voice,… Read more »
Here we go again! Week #5 of James Scott Bell’s 14 signpost scenes, and I promise that you’re in for a big one. Why? Because signpost #5, otherwise known as The Doorway of No Return #1 (The Point of No Return, abbreviated PONR), is one of the three massive, explosive, impossible-to-write-a-story-without plot points. If you’re… Read more »
